SUMMARY: President Fritz Hall admits he did not expect that a 150 year-old "smokestack" company like Benton Foundry would find its marketing profoundly affected by the Internet. However, he discovered that dramatic changes in the ways that big companies run their purchasing departments presents six challenges:
1. The move to centralized purchasing,
2. Less experienced buyers,
3. Increased purchasing contact turnover,
4. Sales literature is trashed,
5. The voice mail barrier,
6. International HQs. Hear how Hall's remarkably simple Web site helped him beat these challenges. Now he gets 40% of new business leads over the Web.

President Fritz Hall admits he did not expect that a 150 year-old "smokestack" company like Benton Foundry would find their marketing profoundly affected by the Internet.

To keep sales coming in, the Foundry relies on close connections with procurement and purchasing managers for large companies requiring custom iron castings. In the past, you could build a long-term relationship with a purchasing person. Regular buyers would even fly out to visit the plant every year or so.

But in the past five years "the marketplace drastically changed." Suddenly Benton Foundry had six serious sales challenges (many of which have affected other industries also trying to reach corporate purchasing departments):

1. Centralized purchasing

In order to save money, many large American companies are centralizing their purchasing and procurement departments. Now instead of interacting with "good qualified buyers that knew the product and knew us," Hall says, "centralized purchasing managers have never seen the product and never will see it. It is shipped to a different location."

2. Less experienced buyers

These new purchasing managers tend to be different from their historic counterparts in that they are both younger and less experienced in buying iron castings. In fact, they may have never even seen even a picture of an iron casting in their life, much less visited a plant. (With business travel budgets cut back to bare bones, few will ever do so.)

3. Increased purchasing contact turnover

In the past, many purchasing managers stayed in jobs for years on end. Nowadays, people switch jobs frequently. Hall says, "There's massive turnover in purchasing people. The larger the company, the worse it is. The average buyer only stays in that job for 10 months. Then they get moved to other areas of the company, or switch jobs."

4. Sales literature is trashed

Unfortunately when these people switch jobs, they rarely leave sales brochures or other printed marketing materials behind them for their replacement to use. "When these guys move, they really clean their offices out. Sales literature normally gets trashed."

5. The voice mail barrier

New procurement managers are unlikely to pick up the phone when a sales rep calls, or to ever call a rep back. Instead, they rely more and more on voicemail to stop all calls from reps they do not know.

Hall explains, "A few years ago you could call and make an appointment to meet with someone new. Now these guys screen their calls with voicemail. If you're a supplier, they don't want to talk to you. You can't set up appointments."

6. International HQs

Although all of Benton Foundry's customers are US-based, these days a solid 30% are owned by companies headquartered outside the US. This means procurement decisions might be made, or require approval, by someone in different country who has never heard of the Foundry, and who is much harder to reach via offline marketing methods.

All six of these challenges meant Benton lost existing relationships and client-side education that had taken years to build.

CAMPAIGN

In early 1997, Benton Foundry launched a basic Web site. It did not feature any bells and whistles, and only contained seven simple pages including the Home page.

These seven pages featured concisely written, straightforward copy about the company's capabilities, along with a few small pictures of staff, facilities and products. The Foundry's email and phone number were prominently displayed at the bottom of every page.

There was no long company history, no detailed specs sheets, no online forms to fill out, no interactive tools, no white papers, no officer bios, no press releases. In short the site was a peeled down version of a B2B site reduced to bare essentials.

Hall did not expect the site to make a huge difference. "We put it up from curiosity."

Indeed he was right. For the first couple of years the site got almost no traffic. Then in 1999, things began to change rapidly, not because Benton was doing anything differently but just because the marketplace was ready. "More and more people are using the keyboard to look for things."

Hall decided it was worth investing more of his energy and marketing budget online. He had been advertising heavily in the print editions of Thomas Regional Directories for more than 15 years. Now, he moved some of that budget from four-color back cover print ads to paid listings in Thomas' online edition. He explains, "We've gone to a smaller ad in the book, because our name still has to be there, but the function is more and more on the Web." These Thomas listings included hotlinks to his site.

He also made sure that other online business directories, such as The American Foundryman's Society and the Ductal Foundry Society sites, included links to his site.

As traffic picked up Hall personally surveyed a lot of larger customers to find out if Benton Foundry was going in the right direction with its Web site. "I contacted them and asked, 'Have you looked at our Web site? Do you have any comments?'"

The results would dismay Web developers trying to sell business marketers fancy sites for a lot of money.

Turns out buyers loved the super-simple site. Hall says, "I learned a lot of company Web sites are too complicated. They'll give company history, lots of info. Frankly buyers do not want to read that. They want to know what you do, and what your products and services are. If you get too long, you'll lose them."

He adds, "One comment that was very common was the fact that they liked the shortness of our site. That there was not a lot of information there that they weren't interested in or they couldn't use. They liked that it was basic and it was focused."

He also learned that buyers really, really liked seeing photographs on the site. "A lot of these buyers in big corporations have not seen a casting, a lot of them have never been to a foundry. When they see on their computer a picture of metal being poured, that's the first time they've ever seen it. The photo gives them the sensation of what's made and how it's made."

Benton Foundry was getting enough sales leads from its site that when so-called B2B dot-com entrepreneurs first came calling offering to sell Benton's products via online auctions and marketplaces, Hall was open to talking to them.

However, he quickly decided it was not the way to go; at least for now. Hall explains, "It's a very common situation that the people running these systems know absolutely nothing about casting or the industry. They're using the word 'commodity' and castings are not a commodity. Every casting we make is designed for that customer only."

He was also not happy with the lack of a serious, supplier-side screening process. "They have to clean their act up. There has to be a major screening process prior to the bidding process for quality standards, on-time delivery, etc. Online bidding generally does not take this into account."

RESULTS

Currently about 40% of Benton Foundry's new sales leads come directly from buyers who learned about the Foundry from its Web site, the Thomas Web site, or other online business listings.

Hall is very satisfied with his Thomas online listings and has doubled his total ad budget with Thomas over the past five years. He notes that only about 2% of his Web-generated leads come from the trade association Web sites he is on because so many of the less experienced buyers have no idea the societies even exist. However, he will keep paying for those listings as well because 2% is better than nothing.

Hall attributes much of his online success to the fact that so many buyers are younger these days, and "the younger buyers just out of college are very computer literate. When they're looking for a product, the first place they go is online. That's why we've seen a drastic pick up in the past three years."

He also notes that the Internet is a great place to impress multinational companies. Many of his site visitors are located outside the US, recommending or approving suppliers for their US-based operations.

Interestingly, although so many leads come from online, almost none come in through email even though the site promotes the email address in every page. Hall says, "The initial contact is Web, but basically 100% will pick up the phone and call."

The only change Hall plans to make on the site this year is to add more pictures. He says, "A picture is worth 1,000 words. If I tell you our plant is 220,000 square feet that's one thing, if I show you an aerial photo of the plant, that's a totally different situation. People like to see who they're dealing with." Especially when they may never get the chance to meet you in person. http://www.bentonfoundry.com

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